Yes, you can

The preening politician: Has to sound intelligent, be social media savvy and camera-friendly. Needs Grooming Specialist

Increasingly, more people have the money, but not the manners," says Mumbai's resident life coach Chhaya Momaya as she chastises you for trying to sample a burrata, an oozy cheese from Puglia in Italy, at The Oberoi's Fenix, with a spoon. It's just not done. But Mumbai is full of many, with a newfound ability to travel, taste and buy who do not know what is not done, says Momaya.

"The moneyed buy Armani Prive by the dozens, in styles that don't suit them, or overdo the brand's signature minimalistic elegance by piling on too much of it. Some acquire Ivy League degrees for their children, but chew with their mouths open at their graduation banquets," she says. Film stars are increasingly buying stakes in corporate firms but don't know how to make a real connect at meetings, bringing their film fronts instead of a toned-down maturity that corporate boardrooms require.

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Lines are blurred and no one, not even big business families who have traditionally nurtured their smalltown origins, can afford to stay insular. "The access to a brand is not what makes you classy; it's about taste and being discerning," adds Momaya. Her clients range from big-gun industrialists, the Ambanis and the Mittals, to politicians and jewellery heiress Varuna D. Jani. Momaya has also been coaching industrialist wives and film stars to keep abreast of current events, reading material and the news so they don't make embarrassing social faux pas. Alia Bhatt's goof-ups on Koffee with Karan in December, calling Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan the prime minister of India, and Kangna Ranaut's request to Mukesh Ambani, instead of brother Anil Ambani, seeking Reliance Big Pictures funding for a film she made, have been the talk of the town and panicked people are seeking 'intelligence managers' in a hurry. It is just not cool to reek of not knowing.

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Arfeen Khan, the 45-year old life coach rumoured to be managing actor Hrithik Roshan's divorce- a fact he refuses to confirm-says it's the result of a bid to stand out. "Ten years ago you stood out if you had an MBA. Today everyone has an MBA.

How do you distinguish yourself? Your confidence," says Khan, who uses his own version of Neurolinguistic Programming, a communication, personal development and psychotherapy technique devised by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the US in 1970s. In the business 19 years now, and based in London and Mumbai, Khan, apart from organising seminars, takes on 10 high-net-worth clients a year, providing them one-on-one coaching. They reportedly include a popular CEO and actors, though he refuses to confirm the client list. Ten per cent of Khan's clients come with problems, he says, including cocaine addicts who he helped kick the habit in two days. The rest look for improvement. Five years ago, he says, making money was the number one life ambition for his clients; today it's crumbling relationships, finances and health, prioritising weight loss, in that order.

Politician with poise

Politicians have been the first to line up. If a woman politician and Union minister has lately been seen teaming her sari with a jacket, it's a sure sign of a life coach's grooming formula that equates a jacket custom-tailored to match the sari with the power suit-a symbol of power, of being businesslike. At the Hiltop Hotel, Mumbai, in the residential enclave of Worli that houses many politicians, a safari suit-clad saviour of the foot-in-mouth-neta is finally taking a breather. Abhinandan Thorat, 50, life coach now for 35 years to stalwarts ranging from Maharashtra Industries Minister Narayan Rane and Prithviraj Chavan to the top-level leadership of the Nationalist Congress Party, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, says the new demand for life-coaching, which now includes social media etiquette, honing of political stances on sensitive issues as well as personal grooming, is a result of the Modi Effect.

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"People are panicking. Everything they say or do will now be compared to Modiji's stage presence, spontaneity and connect. He has raised the bar," says Thorat. Nobody wants to be caught out like Rahul Gandhi in that now infamous pre-poll television interview, his clients tell him. Thorat's tips range from which profile to present to the camera to summarising what he considers must-read books for politicians. He also runs the Chintan News Service, a paid SMS service for politicians which collates information from a private network of nonpaid stringers across urban and rural Maharashtra as well as major metros.

"If (West Bengal Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee holds a cabinet meeting, we don't send out the news to everybody. Only those who need to know will know," says Sachin Ghatpande, editor of the news service. So customised and crucial to everyday existence is life-coaching that it is fast becoming a viable career option for aspiring entrepreneurs. Take for instance Suman Agrawal, 39, a former corporate trainer and grooming specialist for Jet Airways who went on to set up the Mumbai-based ICBI (Image Consulting Business Institute) that trains aspiring life coaches and image consultants.

In a session being conducted at the Satkar hotel in Thane, six young students are analysing the Prime Minister's clothes. They use Modi as an example of why a good life coach does not take away from a client's personal sense of style. The students' coach, 27-year-old Devanshi Gandhi, flies down to Delhi for political clients and to Hyderabad to coach an industrialist matriarch every month. Gandhi says her typical client, one among many industrialists and politicians, corporate honchos and CEOs, does not want to be caught out as being ignorant in front of the wives of her husband's colleagues or her Websavvy, foreign-educated grandchildren.

"For many, it's that they've spent their lives focusing on the climb to the top, and once there, they weren't prepared for everything else that accompanies success: Media focus, constant interaction, wider audiences," Gandhi explains.

The highest demand is from the Tier-II towns like Surat and Thane, where young professionals and students see image as crucial to their stepping up to larger positions. Even the global financial services giant Lehman Brothers, which declared bankruptcy in the US in 2008, went down from the day it introduced casual dressing in office, Gandhi claims, because people began to take their roles "less seriously". Their role, she tells her class, is to "save the country from casualness".

But the spell of coming across well is not restricted to those in the public eye or haute circuits alone. Freyaz Shroff runs KurNiv Kids, a life-coaching academy for children in Mumbai. Pressures on children today have risen, she says, ranging from bullying to dealing with a family trauma like divorce or the need to excel on various fronts, leaving them with low self-confidence. Technology also puts too much information in children's hands too soon, exposing them to all manner of life that they may not be prepared for. Shroff says she often deals with children combating depression, needing to learn how to interact in their peer groups and express themselves. "A new group that is coming to us is special children, children with disabilities, whose parents want them to find the confidence to present themselves to the world," says Shroff.

For others like Megha aka Harini Ramachandran, one of music maestro A.R. Rahman's background singers, it's about being able to find success in one thing. Ramachandran would always forget her lines on stage until she opted for Neuro-linguistic Programming. Today she runs the School of Excellence, which conducts uPwithNLP, an international life-coaching programme that uses the technique to help people rise above their disabilities or focus on specific goals. Sociologist Molly George of California Lutheran University, US, has studied the increasing phenomenon of life-coaching, and attributes its rapid increase in India and China to the growing need to make employment-based decisions.

Arfeen Khan says his seminars often teem with young people from across small-town India who have already upgraded their skills and education but need to find the calm confidence to fit in with the new world order they see coming. Clearly, Young India wants to look good.

Follow the writer on Twitter @Sellingviolets

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